Students join a protest demanding the release of the abducted secondary school girls in the remote village of Chibok, along a road in Lagos May 12, 2014.

United States Sending Manned Flights Over Nigeria to Look for Girls

By Jim Miklaszewski

The U.S. military is flying "manned surveillance flights" over Nigeria at the request of the Nigerian government in search of the nearly 300 missing girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, senior U.S. officials confirmed to NBC News.

While there had been reports the missions were being launched from a U.S. drone base in Niger, a senior defense official told NBC News on Tuesday that the flights were originating elsewhere. The official would not say where the flights originated.

In addition, U.S. intelligence officials are helping the Nigerians "analyze" surveillance photos from commercial satellites obtained by the Nigerian government, officials said separately.

"We have shared commercial satellite imagery with the Nigerians and are flying manned ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) assets over Nigeria with the government's permission," one senior administration official told NBC News.

U.S. officials told NBC News on Monday that they believe the video is authentic, and outside experts said the video reveals that at least some of the girls are alive — or at least they were whenever it was recorded, sometime after the April 15 kidnappings. The video shows about 100 girls.

Various reports have said that the terrorists were selling the schoolchildren as "brides" to other Islamic fundamentalists across the borders in Cameroon and Chad for as little as $12 dollars.

— with Catherine Chomiak and Hasani Gittens

First published May 12 2014, 4:17 PM

Jim Miklaszewski

Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. On 9/11, he was the first at the scene to report that the Pentagon had been attacked and has since led the network's coverage of the war in Afghanistan.

Since joining NBC in 1985, Miklaszewski was a White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, covering President Clinton's transition from Little Rock, his many trips abroad including Moscow and the Middle East and his reelection. He was also an NBC floor reporter at the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996 and 2000.

In the Bush White House, Miklaszewski reported on the Gulf War with Iraq, summits with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and the Bush reelection campaign in 1992.

Miklaszewski has logged considerable foreign experience with battlefront coverage of wars in Lebanon, El Salvador and the Falkland Islands. He also covered the United States air raid on Libya, and the "tanker wars" in the Persian Gulf.